Let's talk about hair...

Hair is a key part in identifying what kind of person a human may be. For instance, if you see a man with a shaved "jar-head" haircut, it's natural to assume they're in the military or have some kind of combat background. According to Ayana Bird and Lori Tharps, in their article "When Black Hair is Against the Rues," they discuss how black women's hair has been scrutinized by the U.S. army in a recent grooming policy that limits or completely bans hairstyles traditional to black women. In another article titled "Oppressed Hair Puts a Ceiling on the Brain," written by Alice Walker, she discusses how throughout life people discover new things about themselves that form their identity. For Alice, it was discovering her beauty within her natural black hair. In both articles, I was able to see how fashion trends and military regulations may not take other ethnicities into account. For example, in "When Black Hair is Against the Rules" the two author's claimed, "Army’s regulations assume that all hair not only grows the same way but can be styled the same way. For example, one permitted hairstyle is a bun. Yet because of the thickness of a lot of black women’s hair, a bun is not always possible unless the hair is put into twists first. But twists and dreadlocks, no matter how narrow and neat, are banned in the policy and labeled “faddish” and “exaggerated.” Each of these articles may talk about hair, but each shared different themes, for "Oppressed Hair Puts a Ceiling on the Brain," it was a sense of freedom and realization that influenced Alice Walker into appreciating her natural beauty, rather than other fashion trends. On the other hand however, in "When Black Hair is Against the Rules" Ayanna Bird and Lori Tharps take more of a powerful and objective approach when they explain how black hair is not being taken into account when the Army released hair regulations for women. All together, both of these articles express the invisible perception held by people that discourages natural black hair.